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Everything is on the line for the new-look Rangers in the 2025-26 season

Mike Gould
Mike Gould
Oct 9, 2025, 13:56 EDT
Everything is on the line for the new-look Rangers in the 2025-26 season
Credit: Brad Penner-Imagn Images

They’ve made some big moves, but on paper, the New York Rangers look only superficially different than the group that won the Presidents’ Trophy two seasons ago.

Rangers general manager Chris Drury has brought in J.T. Miller, Vladislav Gavrikov and a two-time Stanley Cup champion behind the bench in Mike Sullivan. They’ve said goodbye to K’Andre Miller, Chris Kreider, Kaapo Kakko, Jacob Trouba, Peter Laviolette, and a handful of other secondary pieces on and off the ice. Ultimately, on the whole, it’s pretty similar.

But even if this team’s construction doesn’t look like it’s changed, the same cannot be said about the level of urgency seeping into the locker room and executive suites at Madison Square Garden. Everything is on the line for these Rangers, and there may not be another team in the league with more to lose (or gain) this season.

Connor McDavid, Jack Eichel, Kirill Kaprizov, and Kyle Connor have all signed contract extensions in recent days and weeks, leaving Artemi Panarin as one of the few stars remaining without a deal past 2025-26. Since arriving on Broadway in 2019, Panarin has finished well above a point-per-game pace every year and remains a premier offensive catalyst on the eve of his 34th birthday. If the Rangers lose Panarin, it might as well be game over.

The Rangers have operated at a draft-pick deficit basically ever since they selected Alexis Lafrenière first overall in 2020. Last year, they traded their own first-rounder to the Vancouver Canucks in the J.T. Miller deal; the year before, they made just four picks in total. Lafrenière’s up-and-down development has only exacerbated this team’s offensive limitations at times.

But what if Miller is that good? Drury clearly believes in the 32-year-old pivot, considering what he gave up to get him and how quickly he was named team captain. But the fans in NYC are as demanding as any in the league, and it’d be an understatement to say they weren’t happy with Miller’s performance in the season opener against the Pittsburgh Penguins on Tuesday.

For a team that has as much on the line as the Rangers do this year, they sure didn’t look like it against a Penguins team widely expected to finish near the bottom of the standings. They fired just 25 shots on rookie goaltender Arturs Silovs and were outchanced 14 to 6 with Miller on the ice at 5-on-5, leading to an embarrassing 3-0 loss on home ice. Not a great start.

Miller won’t be satisfied with how things went on Tuesday. We all saw last year what can happen when Miller is frustrated with where his team is headed, but this time, he has the added benefit of actually wearing the ‘C’ — thereby having the implicit backing of management. This is Miller’s second stint on Broadway, with his initial departure in 2018 predating Panarin’s arrival. It very much remains to be seen whether those two can find more common ground than Miller did with Elias Pettersson in Vancouver.

There’s a lot up in the air, but it’s not like the Rangers have nothing going for them. Far from it. Drury made a genuinely shrewd move this summer in locking up defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov at a highly reasonable $7 million cap hit, in the process giving star blueliner Adam Fox the best partner he’s ever had. The Rangers need Fox to start looking like a top-five defender again if they want to accomplish anything, and Gavrikov should be a perfect fit on his left side.

And, of course, the Rangers have Igor Shesterkin, who has done a remarkable job stepping into Henrik Lundqvist’s shoes at MSG. Shesterkin should be able to keep this team competitive as long as he’s still there, but he also masks a lot of their flaws, particularly on the defensive side. If things do go south and Panarin departs for greener pastures, the Rangers’ goaltending could keep them in the mushy middle — both a blessing and a curse.

If Panarin does leave, the Rangers would suddenly have one of the least appealing forward groups in the NHL. It’s already a tenuous arrangement as it stands, but without Panarin, it’d fall apart like a house of cards. There’s not much you can do with Mika Zibanejad signed for five more years at an $8.5 million cap hit, or Lafrenière at $7.45 million a year through 2032. Those guys are supporting pieces, but as the name suggests, they need a star forward to support.

Back in August, Daily Faceoff prospect guru Steven Ellis ranked the Rangers’ pipeline 20th in the league. The only true standout is 2023 first-round pick Gabe Perreault, who turned pro late last year after two fantastic seasons at Boston College. Like Panarin, Perreault is an undersized winger with average footspeed, but it’s his ability to read the game and orchestrate plays that has fans in New York so excited. The Rangers really need to hit a home run with Perreault, especially after they grounded into a double play with Lafrenière and Kakko in consecutive years.

It feels like yesterday that the Rangers sent that letter to their season-ticket holders announcing that a rebuild was imminent. Within two years, they had drafted first and second overall, brought Shesterkin over from Russia, stolen Fox from the Carolina Hurricanes, and signed Panarin. It was a quick turnaround, but it might’ve been too quick, and the Rangers were forced to use free agency and trades to build a pricey supporting cast on the fly.

Here we are now, seven years since the letter, and the Rangers are once again coming to a crossroads. Do they double down on what they already have, signing Panarin into his late 30s while hoping Perreault and Fox can lead the next wave? Can they start over from scratch? Or if they try to find some sort of compromise, can they avoid falling into a very expensive form of purgatory?

Forget the letter; this time around, don’t be surprised if there’s enough drama to fill a show at the Met.

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